Driving 12x Revenue Growth with Education Platform Expansion

Challenge

When I joined TestMax, the existing mobile app had a heavily skeuomorphic design. The visual style, inspired by early mobile trends, relied on excessive textures and shadows, making it feel cluttered and outdated. More importantly, the navigation and content structure were unintuitive, creating friction in the learning experience as evidenced by low uptake as well as feedback from our users.

While the mobile app provided a convenient way for students to take their prep with them on-the-go some lesson modalities lent themselves better for larger screens that only a web platform could provide. With research also supporting this idea a push to offer our courses on web was needed. Additionally, selling our courses on iOS meant that we were giving 30% of all sales to Apple which is not sustainable from a margin perspective.

Approach

I began modernizing the design of the mobile platform by shifting to a flat, streamlined aesthetic that prioritized clarity and ease of use. Beyond visual updates, I restructured the information hierarchy to ensure students could navigate lessons, practice exams, and study plans effortlessly. Additionally, I expanded the platform's architecture to accommodate multiple exam types, which enabled the introduction of the LSAT prep course.

After the successful launch of new iOS experience we began our expansion to both Android and web. During this phase I worked directly with the in-house dev team to ensure that experience parity was maintained across platforms while any platform specific UX requirements were respencted.

Impact

• The LSAT course scaled to 75,000 users in it's first few years while it's conversion rate increased from 1.5% to 7.5%.
• The bar course saw 75% user growth in the first year after the new mobile app launch with conversion rate at 15%.
• Web sales scaled to 13 million 5 years after lauch.
• Improved user satisfaction, as evidenced by student feedback and increased positive App Store reviews.
• Boosted retention rates by making study sessions more intuitive and engaging.
• Strengthened brand perception, making it easier to market to new students.

Interface/Navigation Updates

Course Home & Paywall

Module Assignment List

Diagnostic Review / Question Explanations

Performance Analytics

Challenge

After achieving proof of concept for private tutoring with MVP tests we sought to fully integrate a new tutoring service into our existing course product. The goal was to design an intuitive portal that seamlessly connected students with our vetted tutors while managing scheduling, payments, and communication in a frictionless way. We also wanted to upsell existing students who stood to benefit from private tutoring to that new offering.

Approach

This was one of the most complex UX challenges I tackled at TestMax, as it required designing distinct interfaces and experiences for students, tutors, and administrators in order to manage the tutoring coordination process. Key design decisions included:

• A simple, familiar scheduling interface inspired by best practices from tools like Calendly.
• Integrated messaging to facilitate direct communication between students and tutors.
• An administrator dashboard for TestMax staff to oversee and manage sessions efficiently.
• Seamless integration with the main TestMax learning experience to keep everything within a single ecosystem.

Impact

• The tutoring program quickly became one of TestMax’s most profitable verticals achieving 2.5 million in revenue in it's first year.
• Students benefited from personalized support, improving their test outcomes.
• The streamlined experience minimized friction, leading to higher adoption rates among users.

Student Tutoring Dashboard

Tutoring Scheduling Form

While TestMax initially focused on self-paced learning, we recognized a growing trend of online live class instruction that was amplified during the Covid pandemic. We sought to add this service not only to meet that demand but also to help showcase our course and tutoring talent as a way to generate leads and increase revenue.

The challenge was to design a live class system that would seamlessly integrate into the existing platform while providing a compelling experience for both live attendees and those watching recorded sessions later.

Approach

To ensure students could easily engage with live instruction, I focused on:

• Designing a clear, intuitive schedule display that highlighted upcoming live sessions.
• Implementing an easy-to-access way to join live sessions to minimize barriers to participation.
• Creating a well-organized archive of past sessions, enhanced with robust filtering and categorization to ensure students could quickly find relevant content.

Impact

• Increased both LTV and AOPU nearly 30% by driving existing students to private tutoring.
• Successfully used free live sessions as a lead-generation tool, attracting new prospective students to the platform and proving value.
• Provided a competitive advantage by offering live instruction alongside self-paced learning.
• Strengthened student engagement by enabling real-time interaction with instructors.

Live Class Dashboard

Class Session

Challenge

The original message board was a simple discussion tool tied to specific content like video lessons and practice questions. While functional, it lacked essential features that fostered organic community interaction, such as open discussion threads and the ability to like or engage with comments. Additionally, it had little SEO value, as discussions were siloed within the app and not indexed by search engines.

Approach

I led the complete redesign and development of a new message board system. This involved:

• Introducing general discussion spaces where students could ask questions beyond specific course content.
• Adding modern engagement features like upvoting, pinned discussions, and instructor highlights.
• Optimizing the system for SEO, ensuring discussions would be indexed and drive organic traffic.

Impact

• Increased student engagement, leading to more peer-to-peer interaction.
• Enhanced discoverability of TestMax content via organic search.
• Strengthened brand loyalty by fostering a sense of community within the platform.
• Provided students with faster, more diverse support beyond instructor-led guidance.

Community Message Board Index

Message Thread